Thai Roads: The carnage continues with 3,145 dead 'at scene' so far this year

[webfact]

Picture: Daily News

 

Daily News continued their campaign to raise awareness about the appalling carnage on the Thai roads.

 

They reported that 40 more died at the scene of accidents and on the way to hospital on Thursday.

 

This brought the total since January 1st to 3,145 deaths. In the same period last year it was 3,343. 

 

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The media said that the 1st March to 16th death toll was 707, a figure that was at odds with their infographic.

 

The reality is that when fatalities that succumb in hospitals are added the figures are much higher. 

 

Graphic: Daily News

 

 'At scene' deaths have been around 14,000 over the last few years. Senior government figures accept the reality is 20,000+ deaths, notes ASEAN NOW. 

 

The accident Daily News chose to feature for the day was a 70 year old man called Sommai who came off his motorcycle in Bang Roop, Nakhon Sri Thammarat. 

 

There was a large crowd gawking.

 

He perhaps had had a heart attack prompting the media to suggest in their headline that people should ensure their health before taking to the road.   

 

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[hughrection]

13 minutes ago, webfact said:

This brought the total since January 1st to 3,145 deaths. In the same period last year it was 3,343. 

Let's just say a thousand a month.

 

Over 24 months - that's 24,000 give or take.

 

what's being done about it except the erection of tents beside the road while everyone plays on their phones?

 

It is truly sad. ????

 

 

 

[new2here]

My opinion is that these kinds of events are somehow seen in this society as just “happening” as if to imply that there’s no control over them - vis a vis, like an act of God; versus something that’s largely controllable 

… and therefore like acts of god, there’s little true outrage - thus no real political nor social movement to address the issue… it is what it is if you will… because it’s not a problem.. it’s just something that happened.

 

i think until society collectively views these cases as largely avoidable and controllable, it won’t change … 

 

 

[Dmaxdan]

I think that Thai people are about as aware of this ongoing awareness campaign as they are of what is going on around them when they are operating a motor vehicle.

 

 

 

[RichardColeman]

27 minutes ago, webfact said:

This brought the total since January 1st to 3,145 deaths. In the same period last year it was 3,343. 

So, basically , more than a 9/11 death count in the same period for both years ! Shameful 

[law ling]

Shocking numbers, which would be more shocking if they added:

 

1. subsequent deaths (not at the scene), and

 

2. those who survive, but left with life-changing injuries.

[mikebell]

Further proof that Thailand has the police force it deserves.

[Moonlover]

1 hour ago, webfact said:

He perhaps had had a heart attack prompting the media to suggest in their headline that people should ensure their health before taking to the road.   

 

Hmm! 'I feel a heart attack coming on. Perhaps I'm better to stay home today'.

[ezzra]

Been here for over 30 years now and it appears to me that road's fatalities to us foreigners while horrible and horrendous to the Thais they  are views as everyday occurrences and not a big deal to worry about that life brings upon the people of Thailand and they have learned to accept it as part of living, maybe it's a way to shut those tragedies out and that how they deal with them i guess...

[Silencer]

Out of curiosity, what are hospital deaths recorded as after a road accident? "Blunt force trauma" (and no cause) or are they associated with a traffic accident but just do not get counted in daily/yearly statistics?

[vandeventer]

2 hours ago, ezzra said:

Been here for over 30 years now and it appears to me that road's fatalities to us foreigners while horrible and horrendous to the Thais they  are views as everyday occurrences and not a big deal to worry about that life brings upon the people of Thailand and they have learned to accept it as part of living, maybe it's a way to shut those tragedies out and that how they deal with them i guess...

With these figures out, one would think the Government would be harder on those that throw water and ice at car and motorcycles during Songkran.

[FinChin67]

Everyone seems to wear a mask but not a helmet… I guess there would be a way to enforce helmet rule but it will never happen. Same as with other offences…

[Road Warrior]

don't believe its a health problems  !!  the thai drivers  are  the problems 

[Will B Good]

This doesn't have any impact on politicians who, remember, are not there to serve the public, but to line their own pockets.......therefore nothing will change.

 

Let the bodies pile high......they are not real people...just chatter (as Boris Johnson describes them).

[rudi49jr]

That’s 3,145 dead at the scene. You can safely multiply that number by 2 (or even 3) for those who had an accident and died in the hospital, and then you will have the real number of road deaths. Truly appalling statistics. 

[Nicholas Paul KNIGHT]

Nothing will change, it is THAI attitude, that is the huge problem.

The Police only enforce when they want money.

The laws are broken by everybody including those charged with enforcing them

Ignoring a law/sign is normal practice 

Thai drivers know this so they do not care.

The Government pays lip service to the problem .

Result 90% of all Thai drivers break the law each and every day they drive or ride injcluding PUBL:IC SERVICE vehicles 

The only thing to possibly go down is the death rate , wit until the wet season .

[hotchilli]

6 hours ago, webfact said:

continued their campaign to raise awareness about the appalling carnage on the Thai roads.

Continued the campaign... yeah that'll work.

[hotchilli]

6 hours ago, Dmaxdan said:

I think that Thai people are about as aware of this ongoing awareness campaign as they are of what is going on around them when they are operating a motor vehicle.

 

 

 

Zero?

[zzaa09]

1 hour ago, rudi49jr said:

That’s 3,145 dead at the scene. You can safely multiply that number by 2 (or even 3) for those who had an accident and died in the hospital, and then you will have the real number of road deaths. Truly appalling statistics. 

Safely speculating and guess work always does the trick - repeated often and loud enough.

[Bangkok Barry]

6 hours ago, new2here said:

My opinion is that these kinds of events are somehow seen in this society as just “happening” as if to imply that there’s no control over them - vis a vis, like an act of God; versus something that’s largely controllable 

… and therefore like acts of god, there’s little true outrage - thus no real political nor social movement to address the issue… it is what it is if you will… because it’s not a problem.. it’s just something that happened.

 

i think until society collectively views these cases as largely avoidable and controllable, it won’t change … 

 

 

I agree. When you take into account that there cannot be a single family in Thailand which hasn't had a least one member killed or seriously injured then it is just considered as a normal part of life. And as so many Thais are in their own bubble and have little to no knowledge of the world outside its borders they also have no idea that other countries are not in the same situation.

[Will B Good]

37 minutes ago, Bangkok Barry said:

I agree. When you take into account that there cannot be a single family in Thailand which hasn't had a least one member killed or seriously injured then it is just considered as a normal part of life. And as so many Thais are in their own bubble and have little to no knowledge of the world outside its borders they also have no idea that other countries are not in the same situation.

Two people just on our short moo in wheelchairs......one of them lives a few doors away from the man who put her in the wheelchair.

 

Wife said he gave about 20,000 baht after the accident in which he pulled out of a junction into oncoming traffic and she copped for it.

[equalizer1970]

Senior government figures accept the reality is 20,000+ deaths, notes ASEAN NOW. 
Coronavirus Cases:
3,328,973
Deaths:
24,165

[Thunglom]

9 hours ago, webfact said:

their campaign to raise awareness about the appalling carnage on the Thai roads.

Yet more rubbish.

We are ALL aware of the deaths and injuries on Thai roads what Daily News and most other media outlets fail to do is ask why.

Instead we get a litany of -anti-Thai racist and archaic anecdotal evidence.

Safety organisations in Thai KNOW what to do as does the rest of the world's road safety organisations but successive Thai governments have steadfastly refused to take the advice

The problem with thesis that the problem is actually getting WORSE and more difficult to address.

 

[Thunglom]

if you think anecdotal evidence and archaic assessments are relevant, then you are actually part of the problem

[sirineou]

I wonder if there are any statistics of what percentage of those accident were scouters as opposed to cars. 

[it is what it is]

3 minutes ago, sirineou said:

I wonder if there are any statistics of what percentage of those accident were scouters as opposed to cars. 

 

you'd need the reported to do some investigative work for that, not just reproduce per-prepared statistics. forget it.

[CygnusX1]

51 minutes ago, equalizer1970 said:

Coronavirus Cases:
3,328,973
Deaths:
24,165

And of course, the average age of those killed in road accidents would be far lower than that of people succumbing to coronavirus, so there are way more years of life lost in road accidents, year after year.

[Thunglom]

9 minutes ago, sirineou said:

I wonder if there are any statistics of what percentage of those accident were scouters as opposed to cars. 

Surely you know this?

About 73% of DEATHS (not including injuries as they aren't calculated in Thailand) are motorcyclists and their passengers.

About 80% of deaths are "vulnerable" road users - this means 2 and 3 wheeled vehicles pedestrians and a few others.

private 4-wheeled vehicles - cars and pickups are mourned 10 to 13%. - This means per 100k of population you are LESS likely to die in a 4-wheeled vehicle in Thailand than in the USA.other vehicles, trucks buses etc make up about 5%.

The stats gathered in Thailand are not gathered properly especially those gather by the police, but they are consistent over 3 decades so give a good overview.

The final figures are gathered from multiple organisations including hospitals and insurance companies. They are then analysed by such people as WHO which makes them more accurate and relevant.

 

[Thunglom]

1 hour ago, equalizer1970 said:

Senior government figures accept the reality is 20,000+ deaths, notes ASEAN NOW. 
Coronavirus Cases:
3,328,973
Deaths:
24,165

Covid and Car deaths a bad analogy. They are both public health concerns but comparing the two is a false dichotomy – you cant deal with one at the expense of or instead of the other.

The Thai authorities manage to deal with Covid in a reasonably effective way – they have kept numbers down. Unfortunately they still don’t seem to know how to deal with road safety – the solutions are there but they don’t listen.

The two problems are not inter-connected nor do they have the same appearance or effect on society.

Someone with the virus can infect two to three others. Out of every hundred people who contract it, experts believe one will die. Car accidents are not contagious

 

Car statistics are a constant - we would need to imagine that the bounds of the problem were similar. We’d need to imagine, for example, that from one month to another, the number of deaths from car accidents increased by a factor of 10 over a period of a week, and then, it had done so again. If the number of vehicle deaths increased 100-fold over two weeks there wouldn’t be a sudden push to limit driving?

 

Where the coronavirus-to-car analogy really breaks down, though, is that it ignores one of the immediate threats posed by the virus. 

 

When we talk about 20,000 deaths in car accidents, we're talking about that happening nationally over the course of a year. When we talk about the deaths from covid-19, we're talking so far about  spikes in deaths in certain regions over a short period of time. These spikes could cause ripples throughout e community and if left to their own devices could have multiplied into huge numbers permanently damaging Thai for the future. There are systems to deal with road safety and there are systems to deal with Covid, but you can’t use the same methods to deal with each one.

 

[CygnusX1]

11 minutes ago, Thunglom said:

When we talk about the deaths from covid-19, we're talking so far about  spikes in deaths in certain regions over a short period of time. These spikes could cause ripples throughout e community and if left to their own devices could have multiplied into huge numbers permanently damaging Thai for the future.

The death rate from the virus hasn’t been remotely near enough to cause any effect such as that. Also, like it or not, the death of an old, retired person such as myself is enormously less disruptive to the community than the death of a young person with family responsibilities.